Chapter 2: The Taking and the Giving
He broke the kiss, his breath hot and ragged against her lips. “Say that again.”
She was dizzy, her hands fisted in the fine wool of his suit jacket. “What?”
“The curse. In Serbian. Say it again.”
“jebote,” she whispered, the vulgarity a stark contrast to the whisper.
A low, approving sound rumbled in his chest. “Good.” His thumb traced her bottom lip, swollen from his kiss. “My mother was Croatian. The languages are close enough. I like the sound of it in your mouth.”
He kissed her again, deeper, swallowing her next breath, and his hands moved from her face. One arm hooked behind her knees, the other cradled her back. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing. Her world tilted, the cityscape through the window rotating, and she instinctively clutched at his shoulders. The solid muscle beneath the fine fabric was unyielding.
He carried her away from the window, not with rushed passion, but with a deliberate slowness that felt more intimate than any hurried fumble. Each step was a measured announcement of his control, of his intention to draw this out. Her head rested against his shoulder; she could smell the clean, cold scent of his skin mingled with the sandalwood. The silent apartment amplified every sound: the soft tread of his shoes on the stone floor, the rustle of her dress, the unsteady rhythm of her own breathing.
They passed through a doorway into a room even more starkly beautiful. A vast space dominated by a low, wide platform of a bed dressed in ivory linens. The wall opposite was all glass, revealing the dark, rolling tapestry of the English Garden below, dotted with the occasional jewel-like light of a pathlamp. A grand piano, black and sleek, stood sentinel in one corner. The air here was still and cool.
He didn’t throw her onto the bed. He laid her down on the silk duvet with a care that felt incongruous, almost reverent, his hands sliding out from under her slowly. He stood beside the bed, looking down at her as she lay amidst the pale fabric, her dress a splash of crimson, her skin flushed.
He began to undress himself, his eyes never leaving hers. He removed his jacket, folded it neatly over the bench of the piano. The silver cufflinks followed, placed with a soft click on the hardwood. He unbuttoned his shirt, one deliberate button after another, revealing the expanse of his chest, the hard planes of his abdomen, the dark trail of hair that led downward. Tattoos curled over his shoulders and ribs—intricate, old-world patterns, a dagger, some Cyrillic script she couldn’t decipher. This was not the body of a man who paid for a gym membership; it was the body of a man who had built himself through raw, unforgiving work. He was all functional power, scars silvery in the low light.
He unbuckled his belt, the leather sliding free with a hushed hiss. He toed off his shoes, stepped out of his trousers. He stood before her completely naked, unselfconscious, utterly dominant. He was fully, impressively erect. The sight sent a jolt of pure, animal fear and arousal straight through her core.
“Your turn,” he said, his voice gravel-rough.
She pushed herself up on her elbows. The defiance was a habit, a last defense. “Or what?”
He didn’t smile. He placed one knee on the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. He leaned over her, caging her with his arms. “Or I do it for you. And I will not be careful with the dress.”
The threat was coated in a dark promise. She believed him.
Swallowing hard, she sat up. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the side zipper of her dress. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet room. She shimmied the crimson fabric down over her hips, let it pool around her waist. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were high and full, the nipples pebbled tight from the cool air and the intensity of his gaze. A small, choked sound escaped him, a raw intake of breath that was the first crack in his impeccable control.
She lay back, lifting her hips to push the dress down her legs, kicking it off to fall silently to the floor. She was left only in a pair of simple black lace panties. She felt brutally exposed, every curve and muscle she trained with such discipline now on display for his silent, hungry appraisal.
He didn’t touch her yet. His eyes drank her in: the long, powerful lines of her thighs, the dip of her waist, the stunning arc of her hips. “Christ,” he breathed, the word half a prayer, half a curse. “You are a fucking masterpiece.”
He finally touched her. Not with his hands, but with his mouth. He lowered his head and took one nipple into his mouth, his tongue circling the stiff peak before he sucked, hard. She cried out, her back arching off the bed, her hands flying to his hair. It was soft, surprisingly so. He lavished the same attention on the other breast, his teeth grazing lightly, sending shocks of pleasure-pain straight to her clit. She was panting, already wet, the thin lace of her panties soaked through.
His mouth began a ruthless descent. Open-mouthed kisses over her quivering stomach, his tongue dipping into her navel. He hooked his fingers into the sides of her panties and dragged them down her legs. He tossed them aside, then pushed her thighs apart with a firm, unarguable pressure.
He stared at the heart of her, at the slick, exposed flesh. “Look at you,” he murmured, his voice thick. “So perfect. So ready for me.”
He didn’t use his fingers first. He lowered his mouth to her cunt and licked a long, slow stripe from her opening to her clit.
Vanja jerked as if electrocuted. A ragged, “Oh, fuck—” tore from her throat. No one had ever done this to her. The sensation was unbelievable, too intense, too intimate. His tongue was relentless, flat and broad, laving at her, then pointed and precise, circling her clit with a focus that mirrored her own athletic discipline. He ate her like a man starving, one hand pinning her hip to the bed, the other sliding up to fondle her breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers.
“Luka—I can’t—,” she gasped, her hips bucking against his hold. The coil of pleasure was winding too tight, too fast. She was moments from shattering.
He pulled back, his chin glistening with her wetness. His eyes were blown black with desire. “You can. And you will. Come for me.”
He drove two fingers deep inside her without warning. She was so tight, the stretch was exquisite, burning. He curled them, finding a spot that made her see stars. His mouth returned to her clit, sucking it gently, then harder, his tongue fluttering against it while his fingers pumped in and out, scissoring, stretching her wider.
It was too much. The orgasm ripped through her with violent, shocking force. She screamed, her body bowing off the mattress, her thighs clamping around his head as waves of pure, blinding pleasure detonated in her core, radiating out to her fingertips. He didn’t stop, gentling his mouth but keeping his fingers moving inside her, milking the convulsions until she was sobbing, pushing weakly at his shoulders.
He crawled up her body, his weight settling over her. He was heavy, solid, pinning her spent body to the silk. He kissed her, letting her taste herself on his lips and tongue. It was filthy, degrading, and it made her moan into his mouth.
“Now,” he said against her lips. His voice was a raw scrape. “Now, Vanja.”
He reached between them, guiding himself to her entrance. The blunt, wide head of his cock pressed against her, slick with her arousal. He paused, his forehead dropping to hers. His breath was chaotic. For the first time, she saw a flicker of something else in his eyes, a hesitation that looked almost like concern.
“You haven’t done this before,” he stated. It wasn’t a question.
She shook her head, a tiny movement. She couldn’t speak. The fear was back, cold and sharp.
He closed his eyes for a second, as if steeling himself. When he opened them, the predatory gleam was tempered by something else, something fiercely focused. “Breathe,” he commanded softly. “And look at me.”
She dragged her eyes open, locking onto his. The world narrowed to his face, to the startling pale clarity of his eyes in the dim room.
He pushed forward, slowly, inexorably. The pressure was immense, a burning, tearing stretch. She cried out, a short, sharp sound of pain, her nails digging into the hard muscle of his back. He stopped, buried just an inch inside her, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding still.
“jebote,” he gritted out, sweat beading on his temple.
“Breathe, sunce,” he murmured, the serbo-croatian endearment falling from his lips unbidden, soft against her ear. “Just breathe through it.” He didn’t move, letting her body adjust to the brutal invasion, his own shaking with restraint. Her inner muscles fluttered around him, a spasm of pain and startling, unwelcome pleasure.
She forced a breath in, then out, the air hitching. The burning stretch began to morph, the fullness becoming something else, a deep, acheing need. “Okay,” she whispered, the word barely audible. “Okay.”
He moved then, withdrawing almost completely before sinking back in, a fraction deeper this time. The slide was smoother, aided by her wetness and his patience. He set a rhythm that was punishingly slow, each thrust a deliberate conquest of territory, each withdrawal a tantalizing threat of absence. He was so gentle, his hips rolling against hers with a focused precision that sought not to dominate, but to unravel.
His mouth found her neck, sucking at the pulse point there, his tongue tracing the cord of her tendon. One hand slipped between their bodies, his thumb finding her clit again, already swollen and hypersensitive from her first climax. He rubbed slow, tight circles, perfectly in time with the deep, rocking push of his cock.
“Fuck,” she gasped, her head thrashing on the pillow. The pain was a memory, drowned under a rising tide of sensation so profound it felt neurological. Her heels dug into the backs of his thighs, trying to pull him deeper, to get more. “Don’t stop.”
“Wasn’t planning to,” he growled, but his voice was ragged, his control thinning. He shifted his angle, and on the next thrust, he hit a place that made her vision whiten. A shattered cry left her lips.
He did it again. And again. The slow rhythm fractured into something more urgent, more primal. The bed began to rock in a steady, creaking cadence. The sound of skin slapping against skin, wet and obscene, filled the room, punctuated by their ragged breaths and her choked sobs of pleasure. He was everywhere, his scent, his weight, the brutal fullness of him, the clever, relentless work of his thumb.
“Luka, I’m—,” she warned, her body tightening like a coil spring.
“I know. Come on.” His command was a hot breath against her skin. “Let go. Come on my cock.”
It crashed over her without permission, a detonation that seized every muscle in her body. Her cunt clamped down around him, rhythmic, pulsating waves of pure ecstasy that seemed to pull him deeper still. She screamed, the sound raw and unfiltered, her back arching so sharply only his weight kept her grounded.
The sensation of her climax milking him was his undoing. He drove into her once, twice more, deep and hard, his own rhythm breaking into desperate, shallow thrusts. He buried his face in her hair, his whole body tensing like a bowstring.
“Vanja,” he gasped, the word strained. “Where do you want it?”
The question, crude and intimate, speared through her post-orgasm haze. She understood. Her arms tightened around his sweat-slicked back. “Inside,” she moaned, the word a surrender and a command. “Inside, please.”
It unleashed him. A guttural, shattered sound ripped from his throat, part agony, part relief. He shoved into her one final, devastating time, hips grinding deep as he pulsed inside her. He came harder than he ever had in his life, a torrential release that emptied him completely, his vision spotting, his mind blank of everything but the feel of her tight, fluttering heat around him and the sound of her sigh in his ear.
He collapsed, his full weight pressing her into the mattress, but he caught himself on his forearms at the last second. He was breathing like he’d run a marathon, great heaving gulps of air. He didn’t pull out. He stayed there, lodged within her, as the aftershocks subsided.
Slowly, carefully, he rolled them onto their sides, never breaking the connection. He tucked her against his chest, her back to his front, his arms wrapping around her waist. His lips brushed the juncture of her neck and shoulder, a kiss of startling tenderness. Neither spoke. The only sounds were their slowing breaths and the distant hum of Munich beyond the glass.
Exhaustion, deeper than any post-race fatigue, washed over her. The adrenaline, the fear, the overwhelming pleasure—it had all burned her out. Her eyelids grew heavy. The last thing she felt was the steady, strong beat of his heart against her spine, and the warmth of his come leaking from between her thighs.
She fell asleep on him, her body going limp and trusting in his embrace.
He lay awake in the semi-darkness, watching the city lights paint soft patterns on the ceiling. He adjusted just enough to see her profile against his arm. Her lips were parted, her dark blond lashes fanned on her cheeks, the sharp intelligence of her face softened into peaceful oblivion. He watched her beautiful face rest, tracing the line of her cheekbone with his gaze, and felt a fissure crack open somewhere deep behind his ribs, a cold, dangerous draft where there had only been stone before.
He did not sleep. The weight of her against him, the smell of her skin and sex tangled in the sheets, the quiet trust of her unconscious form—it was an ambush he hadn’t foreseen. He watched the sky through the window bleed from black to indigo to a cold, smoky grey. The fissure behind his ribs didn’t close. It ached.
He extracted himself from her with a patience he never employed in business, sliding his softening cock from her warmth with a grimace. She whimpered in her sleep, a faint sound of protest, and curled into the space he’d vacated. He stood naked by the bed, looking down. The evidence of her virginity, a faint smudge of brownish-red on his skin and the sheets, was a claim he hadn’t known he wanted to make. It unsettled him.
He showered in the adjacent en suite, the water scalding. He scrubbed at the dried blood, her scent, but it felt ingrained. When he returned, a towel slung low on his hips, she was still asleep. The morning light, harsh and revealing, showed the faint bruises beginning to bloom on her hips where his fingers had gripped her, a purple shadow on her neck from his mouth. A possessive mark. He should have felt triumph. He felt something quieter, more corrosive.
He dressed in clean, dark trousers and a simple black t-shirt, moving silently. In the vast, minimalist kitchen, he set coffee to brew and pulled eggs, butter, and herbs from the stainless steel refrigerator. The domesticity of the actions felt absurd, a pantomime of normalcy. He cracked eggs into a bowl, the sound sharp in the quiet.
The scent of coffee and browning butter finally seeped under the bedroom door. Vanja stirred, consciousness returning in fragments: the ache between her legs, a deep, pleasant soreness in muscles usually reserved for the track, the unfamiliar scent of linens and him. She opened her eyes to the empty space beside her, the cold pillow. For a disorienting second, panic clawed at her throat. Then she heard the faint clatter of a pan from another room.
She sat up. The sheets pooled around her waist. The memory of the night assembled itself in her mind with brutal, exquisite clarity—his mouth, his hands, the searing stretch of him, the shocking, helpless pleasure. She touched the bruise on her neck. Her cunt throbbed in response. She found her discarded dress on the floor and slipped it on, the crimson silk now wrinkled, a relic from a different world. She didn’t bother with underwear.
She found him in the kitchen, his back to her, his focus on the omelette he was folding with a precise flick of his wrist. The tattoos on his forearms shifted with the motion. He looked both utterly out of place and completely in command, a wolf in a stainless-steel den. She leaned against the doorframe, watching.
“You cook,” she said, her voice hoarse from disuse and last night’s screams.
He didn’t turn. “I do a lot of things.” He slid the omelette onto a plate. “Coffee’s there. Cream in the fridge. Sugar somewhere.”
She poured herself a mug, black, and took a scalding sip. The caffeine hit her bloodstream like a starter’s pistol. She felt more herself. She watched him plate the food, toast now popping up. He moved with an economical grace, no wasted motion. “This is a weird vibe,” she said finally. “After last night.”
“What vibe would you prefer?” He turned then, placing two plates on the quartz island. His eyes scanned her, taking in the dress, her bare feet, her tangled hair. “Should I have woken you up by fucking you again?”
The crude words, delivered in his low, measured tone, sent a fresh jolt of heat through her. “Maybe.” She shrugged, walking to the island, sitting on a stool. “It would track.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Eat.”
She did. The omelette was perfect, fluffy and herbs punctuating the eggs. She was ravenous. She ate quickly, athletically, and he watched, sipping his own coffee. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t empty. It was charged with everything unsaid, everything that had happened in the dark.
“I hurt you,” he stated, not looking at her.
She finished a bite, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Yes.”
“Do you regret it?”
She considered. The soreness was a constant, reminding presence. “No.”
He put his cup down with a definitive click. “You should.”
That made her look up, sharp. “Why?”
“Because I’m not a good man, Vanja. Because what I want from you isn’t just this.” His gesture encompassed the kitchen, the bedroom, the sex. “It’s everything. And I take what I want.”
She held his gaze, her dark green eyes unwavering. “I know what you are. The Butcher. I put it together around 3 a.m., while I was waiting for you to fall asleep. The name, the Croatian thing, the… everything.” She took another bite. “Doesn’t change the omelette. Or last night.”
He stared at her, this terrifying young woman who absorbed criminal infamy and phenomenal sex with the same pragmatic intensity. The draft behind his ribs turned into a howling wind. He came around the island, stopping beside her stool. He didn’t touch her. “You should be scared.”
“I am,” she said simply, looking up at him. “It’s kind of a thrill.”
He cupped her jaw then, his thumb stroking the line of her cheekbone, a mirror of his watchful gesture in the night. The touch was incongruously gentle. She leaned into it, turning her face to press a soft, closed-mouth kiss against the center of his palm.
She pulled back and a slow, surprised smile touched her lips. “You’re blushing,” she said.
He was. A faint, ruddy heat had climbed his neck, staining the sharp angles of his cheeks. It was so utterly disarming, so foreign on his face, that for a second he looked like a different man. He recovered quickly, his eyes narrowing, but the blush remained.
He grinned, a sharp, white, dangerous flash of teeth. It wasn’t a friendly expression. It was a recognition, a surrender to the absurdity. “Fuck you,” he said, the words lacking all malice.
“Maybe later,” she said, and took another sip of coffee.